Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Blog start

I've been researching travel to Mexico for several weeks. We head to the US for a family visit in May 2015, and want to take the opportunity to venture further.

The cultural richness of Mexico is rapidly seen. Mexico's history is dauntingly dramatic. Mexico currently has major political reforms underway, and these connect to major social upheavals and violence in some places.

We started with the simplest images in the film Frida. Which has influenced so many in style and which conveys something of the vigour of life in Mexico to us. This influenced our start point for travel plans, in Coyoacan, near Frida's house.

We do not wish to run around the country, but base ourselves first for a week in a quiet residential corner of Coyoacan, within reach of buses and metro, and shoe leather, than ten days in Guanajuato.

There are links here also to Oaxaca [wahaca] in the south, so richly multicultural and interesting. Had we more time it would be next on our list. These places all at high altitude, above risk of malaria.

I am indebted to the Mexico forums at TripAdvisor, for practical and thoughtful advice. That is to say, I am indebted to the friendly inhabitants of those forums for their generosity in prompt provision of their diverse ideas.

We had come down the California coast through Humboldt County and among the intellectual and social tendrils of Humboldt University and we e...

Aztec Venus: Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli

"...the ancient Mexicans had calculated accurately that the orbits of the earth (c.365 days), the moon (c.260 days) and Venus (c.584 days) come together only once every 104 years (two Aztec ‘bundles of years’ or centuries’). Their knowledge of time and its cycles was truly stunning."

This was a place to store resources before travelling, then came live in Mexico on 26 May 2015

I find a blog concentrates the mind while travelling, Unlike our blogs of travel to Italy and Japan, I'm not familiar with Mexico, but increasingly aware of the immense social, political and historical complexity. So this blog begins well before we depart...

Some reading resources on the education reform issues sparking vioence and the drug war